RFK, Jr. Promises What Science Can't

 

RFK Jr: "By September we will know what has caused the autism epidemic and we will be able to eliminate those exposures." pic.twitter.com/gSDVvsD9CH

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) April 10, 2025

You might have to read the title of the blog post more than once--it isn't complimenting Kennedy on what he claims will happen in a matter of months, but rather, if he gets an "answer' in that time, it won't be about the science. Mostly because everything he's saying is wrong.

We don't have an autism epidemic; we have a diagnosis epidemic. We don't lack for research. There are multiple genes and epigenetic factors involved. You can't "eliminate" all potential exposures related to something that has multiple causes. 

Also, and this is important: the way Kennedy speaks about eliminating exposure to a "cause" of autism makes me very concerned about what he thinks about autistic people, that the people expressing aspects of the autism spectrum are broken or less-then. 

The Weak Dictator DeSantis

 

I keep thinking I want to write something about Desantis (because he is uniquely awful as a 2024 GOP candidate and as a governor) but it just always feels like there is more Trump news. It's hard for even a dedicated, intentional troll to maintain headlines of any kind when your primary opponent is a) a former president and b) keeps getting indicted and stuff. So, in the midst of avoiding writing yet another damn TrumpWorld post, I thought I'd just catch up with Ron. 

Trump likes to tout that he's rising in the 2024 polls, but it's more the case that DeSantis, his nearest competitor, has fallen and possibly can't get up. The Florida governor's campaign "reset" just saw his campaign manager replaced with his state COS. He fired about a third of his campaign staff, but some campaign aides got jobs working for his state office.  

Some of his aides must have really shown quite the work ethic. His campaign does feel like it's chock-full of hustlers. 

Here there be massacres

 It is traditional,

like love letters

and candy, 

we have massacres here:

red and black and white

color our Valentine's Day,

cupid's arrows replaced by bullets,

the romance of the gun

and an affair with Death.

It is traditional,

like a daily ritual

practiced in tiny classrooms

and taught in auditoriums,

and workplace videos to remind you

your co-worker could go berserk,

so please take time to think how

you should run, hide, fight.

We have massacres here

for the old and young with no exemption,

our one truly inclusive

experience, and some

get to see two or more

in even one short lifetime.

Here there be massacres--

a feature of our landscape like amber waves of grain,

only waves of pain

and passersby that jest at scars

not having felt a wound.

And it happens so many times in a week 

we can hardly speak to it,

other than to say it happens and something goes horribly awry--

but we never quite answer: why?

My Nostalgia Is Acting Up

Eminem defies NFL and kneels in solidarity with Colin Kaepernick during Super Bowl halftime show https://t.co/XDI07ULqDk

— The Daily Beast (@thedailybeast) February 14, 2022

They told Slim Shady to please stand up, but Slim Shady said God sent him to piss the world off.

There was a lot of commentary on Twitter about how this half-time show was about my generation, and frankly, we never did say we were going to die before we got old. We said don't you forget about me. And we are getting old, and I wish more of us were getting wise. 

The fucking kids aren't all right. Charlie Kirk thinks the half-time show was full of sexual anarchy. This dumb man-baby must have been peeing in his diapers through the Janet Jackson and Prince half-time shows. He literally comes off like John Lithgow's character in Footloose.  That's two Footloose references I've made this month. I may be getting old. I repeat myself. Matt Walsh, middle aged but younger than me, doesn't know "woke" means aware, and Marshall Mathers is aware he's a white guy who owes a fuckton to Black music and Black people. That he's supposedly making amends for anything else is Walsh's own bullshit. 

I'm glad the convoy asshats didn't come to LA to fuck with the Super Bowl despite what loons like Wendy Rogers and Senator Rand Paul wanted. That would have been a shitshow--all those Confederate flags in LA. I don't think those two remember how things could go, because they forget that urban America is also real America. They think it would scare the shit out of people who live in the cities that right-wing dumbasses think have been burned down by BLM. They forget riots that have happened not even thirty years ago. 

I don't, The truckers don't, either, and they probably know that unlike Ottawa or Windsor, if you go to LA or NY or Philadelphia, you might meet with an entirely different atmosphere that isn't going to wait for police action because nope. Residents will find a way. People have turned out en masse for deceased kids they didn't even know, and some jackasses want to disrupt the shelves at Acme and whether our own kids get fed--are you for real? 

Researching Your Ginormous Balls Off

 

Maybe it's wrong of me to doubt that Nicki's cousin's best friend's balls blew up (at 31 Flavors, so I guess it's pretty serious) but unless the vax came with a side of chlamydia, I'm guessing that the wedding was called off because friendo was raw-dogging karma and it bit back. I only snark here to make a point--she is saying "pray on it and make sure you're comfortable" and isn't saying she won't get the vaccine ever, just not now and appreciated that some people do have to get it for their job. That's not anti-vax, and it's definitely respectful to people who have reservations, but...

I'm so tired of the vaccine hesitancy because the worst case scenarios of the virus are just way worse than the anecdotal evidence out there about any problems the vaccine might have. I'm talking about parents passing it to their little kids and losing them so young. Or families with young children suddenly becoming orphans. Pediatric COVID-19 deaths in the US have remained in the few hundreds, so it's rare, but we don't know what the long-term effects on these kids could be. The US is 4th in the world for children orphaned by COVID-19, with well over 100,000 kids with lost parents. 

So I guess what I'm getting at is, doing research sounds smart--the rational thing to do, and all. But I think people who start to research what might be wrong with the vaccine start to forget to weigh it against what we definitely know is wrong with COVID-19, and it's a hell of a lot. 

Like, for one thing, it is definitely killing people. Contrary to what the hardcore hospital-protesting crazies want to say, which seems to be that somehow, health care workers are actually contriving COVID-19 deaths for their own nefarious ends. 

(I have never been a fan of turning rubber hoses on protestors, but you know...they pose a risk to public safety and welfare and are interfering with the care of all kinds of sick and injured people, so I see what they are doing as basically terrorism against patients and healthcare workers. But once we allowed anti-abortion protesters space to harass healthcare workers and patients at clinics, this is the creep you get.) 

It has also caused increased lost pregnancies and loss of maternal life or increased risk of serious illness for obstetric patients.  And while there's no evidence the vaccines cause reproductive sterility, there is a risk that COVID-19 can. 

A Bargain with the Devil

Dr. Deborah Birx, the White House coronavirus response coordinator under former President Trump, said in a CNN documentary clip that she thinks the US could have saved hundreds of thousands of lives lost to Covid-19 following the pandemic's first surge. https://t.co/cB08LLbIaw pic.twitter.com/cXqvnYWYa7

— CNN Newsroom (@CNNnewsroom) March 27, 2021

The kindest view I can take of Dr. Birx and others not speaking out regarding the Trump Administration's mismanagement of the COVID-19 crisis is that it was a hell of a deal--remain silent watching them do a half-assed job, or speak out, have the Trump Administration do the one thing they could do well, which was use politics to smash their credibility (you know who MAGAs would have sided with) and see things slide into a whole-ass disaster. They felt that if they didn't fluff Trump and his ego, he'd have made everything that much worse. And understanding the kind of person Trump is, and was surrounded by, yeah. I can see how they could have made it worse. We just don't know what that alternative would have looked like if they refused to deal with the devil.

*They should have spoken out, anyway because people are dying--but given that Trump is the guy who encourage militias to "LIBERATE!" certain states, yeah. I can see how they could have made things worse.

If you were Wondering--

Is the PR debt the reason Trump isn't rushing any military assistance, like the USNS Comfort,  down there?  He is Commander-in-Chief after all. Also, I would say as a good old fashioned techno-capitalist, if Google isn't shushing on down there with Project Loon and AT&T and others aren't thinking of ways to get them some cell-signal boosts--they are missing out (I am serious, they need this help, but let me talk dollars and cents) on a great display of technical know-how and a great advertising opportunity.

Same deal, you guys who do solar panels and electric generators. If you have the warez, send 'em down PR way. They need it. The Virgin Islands also need your skills. Bring them, and show off what you can do. We are on a warming planet where floods and disasters like these are going to occur more and more. Display that you have the know-how to sort out these technical difficulties. You will get repaid, I can goddamn guarantee.

It looks like the US Government is not the best of us at the moment (except for you civil service professionals that I know are champing at the bit to help)--so it might just be up to the rest of us. No grifters need apply. But these folks haven't just lost domiciles and cell connections--the island of Puerto Rico has had its vegetation stripped and its potable water fubar'd--inventors and investors, bring your solutions. These people need you.

These are Americans, and their status as debtors means not one thing at all. They are our brothers and sisters, and they need help.

Sen. McCain Diagnosed with Glioblastoma

My history regarding covering Senator John McCain has been one of serious criticism, and that is not something I easily set aside--as a public servant, he has long been about diminishing what government does for one domestically, and expanding what government does on the international stage. I have found him at times a diffident and biased actor--not always following through on political claims for what I have assumed was partisan reasons. But there is one thing about him I will say, especially in light of his recent diagnosis with glioblastoma, a difficult, aggressive, and generally tragic form of brain cancer--

Senator McCain is a hero and does have a code of honor. It isn't something he telegraphs, but something he just lives. I disagree with him politically, but especially in light of certain recent political events, I have come to find his occasional equivocations and arguments more honest than what I see from people boasting the same party label at times today. This isn't to praise nor bury him. I just wish him an easy time of it, because cancer is a son of a bitch of a disease and he's got a rotten one. And no one deserves what it can do.

(Which, in keeping with my traditions, is why I endorse keeping Obamacare alive, because this sort of shit happens to humans less fortunate than Senator McCain, who don't deserve it either, and who have families and lives and loved ones and jobs to do.  Fuck cancer. Also, fuck Trumpcare, repeal and replace, or even just repealing. Because this happens to fathers, and grandfathers, and respected elder statespeople. And yes, I am using McCain's diagnosis to raise a point. I don't know that he would go so far as to use it, politically, himself. But of the people I know who have had and survived cancer-- care matters, treatment matters, and access is a matter of human welfare--fully in the purview of Congress. I would like to see him have an understanding now of what less-privileged folks already know--they utterly need access, affordability, regulations that protect them and their pre-existing conditions, and how.  But what I like is not McCain's problem. His own bout with serious disease is. )

Was Mike Huckabee Always this Horrible?

.@GovMikeHuckabee: A lot more afraid of a Clinton presidency than "of getting a mosquito bite in South Florida." https://t.co/vIe7FoCnxW

— ABC News Politics (@ABCPolitics) August 11, 2016

Here we have former AR Governor Mike Huckabee haw-hawing over not being afraid of being bitten by a mosquito. Well, fine--for him. He's not a pregnant woman or woman of child-bearing age.

But take heart to this sad case of a young woman who traveled to El Salvador who didn't even know she'd been infected, who gave birth to her baby in Texas and all the time she ever spent with that child was the day she watched it die. I can't even imagine the grief she must feel, but I have the idea one should try to, or you aren't humaning right.

That story goes on to report:

Fifteen babies in the U.S. have been born with Zika-related birth defects, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Seven women have lost pregnancies due to Zika. Those numbers could grow. Nearly 1,000 pregnant women in the continental U.S. and territories have been infected with Zika.

Miami is battling a local Zika outbreak in the Wynwood neighborhood that has infected 21 people, according to the Florida Department of Health.

More than 7,300 Americans have been diagnosed with Zika, including 1,825 in the continental U.S. and 5,548 in U.S. territories, according to the CDC. Most Zika cases in the continental U.S. are related to travel or sex with someone who has traveled. One Zika case was caused by a lab accident.

Women and families mourning their lost children, their children who won't live, their children whose lives have been interrupted by disease, whose families will be impacted for years to come. Sure, he isn't worried--but what about these folks? How is someone so clueless and so heartless at once? It just seems like I would not have expected that from Gov. Huckabee at one time. It is a shame this is where he is now.

Comparing a Clinton presidency to a virus is also beneath contempt. He's merely hyperbolically bad at analogies.

Marco Rubio Should Keep Out of This

One of the most disturbing things the media tried to do with Marco Rubio was try to portray him as someone who was less radical and incendiary than a loud-mouth like Trump. Rubio's professed beliefs on social issues are extremely retrograde--take his appearance at a homophobe hootenanny.  The guy claimed that the mass shooting at an Orlando LGBT nightclub reminded him of his calling to public service--and at the first opportunity, he's back on the side of oppressing people who happen to be gay, and he won't do anything about guns, either, and oh, he's basically fish-titty useless on understanding the causes and concerns of Islamic radicalism, because he doesn't know the difference between Shia Iran and Sunni Wahhabist ISIS. But you know what he never needs to insert himself in--

Family planning. Especially when it comes to his recent empathy and good sense-lacking commentary on what Zika-infected women should do regarding their pregnancies.

The short of the long is, because he's so very, very pro-life, he doesn't think women should have the right to determine whether they can terminate a pregnancy that may result in a severely impaired child, that may be physically onerous on them (because of being infected) and may prove highly costly to that woman, her family, and their community. He lets his four-letter fig leaf, in other words--"life"--trump everything else that might be meaningful in this discussion. He would prefer he take the power to choose out of the hands of women, leaving them with children whose lives are extraordinarily burdened, and inflicting suffering on families as a result.

I find it less than amusing to note, that he uses the language of pseudoscience: "pain-capable" regarding fetuses, and yet ignorantly and with all paternalism, ignores the actual real pain that is experienced by the post-born people who live in the actual world, and who, if one were the baby in question, endure such symptoms as vision and hearing loss, severely delayed development, seizures, and a host of other ills. And, if one were the parents, a lifetime controlled by the need to provide for a severely impaired infant--who would cease to be an infant in time and would become, at some point, an adult, with all these impairments, with elderly parents who might not outlive that child's needs.

It's none of his fucking pro-life concern whether these people seek out a legal medical procedure to avoid that enduring pain. It's brutality on his part to suppose that his moral qualms supplant the understanding of other people about what they need to do for the better future of their families. He is mind-blind to the struggles they will face, in the certainty of his own internal righteousness.

I hope he loses his damn Senate seat, and that the private sector is as cold to him as as the moral freezer he keeps his regard for us human meat-puppets in.

The Least the Governor of Michigan Could Do

Michigan governor calls in the National Guard to help with the water crisis in Flint: https://t.co/jd1JjxpZat pic.twitter.com/I9LLwCTmJG

— The Root (@TheRoot) January 14, 2016

Calling in the National Guard to distribute water to the people in Flint, MI who do not have drinkable tap water, is a bit behind the beat and the least he could do. The people of Flint have had their water prices jacked-up by Detroit before the switch to the corrosive and polluted Flint River water source, and have enjoyed the benefits of funky, yellow, e coli-laden, lead-contaminated, and now possibly Legionnaire's disease-tainted water ever since. And they are being asked to pay for the privilege of being poisoned.

You couldn't call what is happening to these people "government", let alone "emergency management". I'd call it "depraved indifference" to the people Governor Snyder is supposed to be answerable to, and there should be a better answer than passing out bottled water at this late date. These folks need their water bills forgiven, they need a new water supply, and for the damage done to their kids, there needs to be a monetary settlement because the damage from lead to the children of Flint is not reversible and will impact their long-term cognitive health.

And every other governor or would-be governor of any state should look at this episode in future as the reason why you do not save pennies at the expense of human health and safety. It's an appalling mess.

Climate Sunday: Donald Trump Edition

The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 6, 2012

Keeping with the traditions I make up here on the fly, I have named this week's climate change and environment round-up after Donald Trump, who alleged, as the Tweet above shows, that climate change is a hoax started by the Chinese. (There is so much more raving silliness where that came from it's almost not funny. Almost. But mockingly plow on, I must.) But really--he doesn't know the Swedes started it? I'll give a buffalo nickel to anyone with the stones to ask him for the name of one Chinese climatologist.

Trump is still nattering on about climate change with apparently no more sense than he has about things appearing in the Bible, foreign policy, and how not to look racist in public. As a benchmark, I'd have to say my favorite "kooky uncle-you-ignore-on-Facebook" moment is when he quixotically actually made a crusade of tilting at windmills. When Carly Fiorina drops nonsense about stuff like windmills killing birds, you kind of just want to laugh it off and wonder what she's fixing to do about the damn cats. When The Donald calls windmills an eyesore and claims they don't look classy, you're in meta-territory. They don't look right. Shoot. The Dutch were cool with windmills, back in the day. Maybe Trump just has a problem with strong winds in general.

Anyway, he's not much worse than the rest of the "not-a-scientist" pack at the recent primary debate. Most either ignore climate change entirely or consider it a hoax, and where they don't, they use vague economic excuses about why they don't think anything should be done about it. Sen. Marco Rubio's "America is not a planet" line sticks out for it's half-rightness. Of course, The US is just one country that happens to exist on this particular globe--but exist on it we do. So climate change actually affects us and our responsibility doesn't change because of "Well, what are the other countries doing?" And for that matter, China is often used as the scapegoat--what are they doing anyway? Well, turns out they are doing a thing or two or a bunch. They are losing many citizens to environmentally-related diseases. They can't not realize that not addressing climate change is just as much a losing proposition for them in the long run. And keep in mind that globally, it's always the poor who are most screwed over by the results of climate change. Pretending we'll do nothing because it benefits them is a disgraceful lie.

Failing to understand how climate change affects populations in vulnerable areas as a national security and foreign policy issue is part of what's driving things like the Syrian refugee crisis. People willfully closing their eyes to the reality of climate change because they think it's about dollars and cents, are completely unprepared to recognize that this is not just a humanitarian issue abroad, but at home, when you consider that the western wildfire season has become nearly year-round and is costing our economy astronomical sums. Our coastal regions (where many countries have put their big cities because of the convenience for shipping trade) will also suffer from sea level rise--which is measurably occurring.  We experience significant short-term evidence of a warming planet, but also, some of the oases of supposedly contradictory evidence, like the polar ice caps, are melting away. The so-called hiatus when things weren't heating up--doesn't seem to have actually happened.

Donald Trump is way wrong on environmental issues and basically a conspiracy theorist, just like he is regarding Ebola, vaccines, or whether President Obama was born in America. The idea that this kind of gob-stopping ignorance is thisclose to the Presidency is really scary.

Climate Sunday: I've Seen the Future and It's Murder

I'm back with another Pessimist's Club update about the planet and what we're doing to it--and this one is going out to the EPA, who couldn't very well dump bunches of heavy metal-laden mining waste into the Animas River unless it was there to be dumped, not that I'm letting them off the hook. Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper drank that weird yellow water, but then he has guzzled fracking water, too. He might be a little weird. But basically, mining is dirty business for water, and the risk of contamination can continue long after mines have gone defunct.

But anyway, did you know we hit Earth Overshoot Day just recently? We're taking more from the planet then it can afford to give. When we get the bill for the overdraft fees, it's gonna be a headache.

Air pollution in China is determined to be the cause of over 4,000 deaths a day.  That's 1.6 million people a year. That's worse than a war. A lot of that problem is coal--there is no tech that makes burning that stuff 100% clean.

Rolling Stone has a pretty good article on the abundant evidence that global warming is totally a thing, which is a lot of what I've been talking about on this humble surfactant container. The title has the scariest words: The Point of No Return.

If you were wondering, was this July hot enough for ya? Goddamn it was hot enough. The hottest on record. The global heat wave is good for germs. But if you aren't a bacillus, it kind of sucks to be you. Especially if that "you" is in one of those canary in a coal mine countries that is especially hard-hit by climate change.

What do we have to do about this? Change everything. When do we have to do this? Yesterday. But I'll settle for more coalmines going bankrupt, more solar power everywhere, and a drive to treat conservation sort of how people dealt with sweetless, wheatless and meatless days during WWI and the recycling drives of WWII.  We can lick climate change! Win the global war on US with Us-Power! And let's get it done with the help of the Sun!

Antibiotic-Resistant and Airborne--It's Evolution, Baby

I don't think I give as much shrift to my concerns about sustainable agriculture and the many problems of our agricultural-industrial complex on this blog as I should, but if you wanted a glimpse into the kind of thing that really haunts me, why, this would be it:

Texas Tech University researchers examined particulate matter in the air, finding both antibiotics and antibiotic-resistant bacteria in samples taken downwind from cattle ranches. Investigators are worried that this material could be carried by wind into populated areas, hindering treatments for potentially dangerous diseases. Over 80 percent of all antibiotics sold in the United States are used in cattle to lengthen lives and improve yields.  

The 10 ranches examined in the study were all located within 200 miles of the city of Lubbock, with samples being taken over a period of six months. The investigation focused on feedlots in the South Plains and Panhandle of Texas. Cattle at these facilities are exposed to large quantities of antibiotics as they are fattened up before they are brought to market.  

"To our knowledge, this study is among the first to detect and quantify antibiotics and antibiotic-resistant genes ... associated with airborne PM emitted from beef cattle feed yards," environmental toxicology researchers at Texas Tech University said.

Sometimes there are scares about "avian flu" (a viral agent) and masses of poultry get slaughtered, usually in some Asian market. The idea that a bacteriological agent could infect large numbers of cattle in the US, and the accompanying notion of what might be needed to combat a massive outbreak of the same, here, and what it would cost the meat industry, here, strikes me as potentially very devastating to a significant portion of the US. To an extent, it's only possible because of the high concentrations of antibiotics already in use in regular feedlot treatment of food livestock. But an epidemic would affect all cattle ranchers, including organic non-CAFO operations. Basically, it could financially wipe some farmers out, especially if they had to find some way to cull part of or all of their stocks and isolate some other parts--under these conditions, how is that even--?

It's not an unexpected turn of biological events, but knowing some "worst case" scenario has been instantiated is pretty depressing.

Would You Like E.Coli With That?

Recently-minted NC Sen. Thom Tillis has a very interesting take on basic hygiene and human health--he's agin' it:

“I was having a discussion with someone, and we were at a Starbucks in my district, and we were talking about certain regulations where I felt like ‘maybe you should allow businesses to opt out,'" the senator said.

Tillis said his interlocutor was in disbelief, and asked whether he thought businesses should be allowed to "opt out" of requiring employees to wash their hands after using the restroom.

The senator said he'd be fine with it, so long as businesses made this clear in "advertising" and "employment literature."

“I said: ‘I don’t have any problem with Starbucks if they choose to opt out of this policy as long as they post a sign that says “We don’t require our employees to wash their hands after leaving the restroom,” Tillis said.

Uh huh. I know a lot of other people have pointed out that this is just nasty, and obviously, this is how e. coli spreads, and so on, but just from the sheer anti-regulation nonsense aspect--if he doesn't have any problem with a business "opting-out" of hand-washing so long as they "advertise" (right, player?), what mechanism would actually make any establishment advertise any such a gross thing? The "market" would give the business ample reason not to advertise it.  And if people got sick from some nasty, non-hand-washing people, the very fact that other businesses out there were playing by the same "opt-out" rules would make it harder to track down the source of the problem.

It's really hard to take someone entirely seriously who has a perspective like this, and yet, I have no choice but to take him at face value. Gross.

Dr. Carson Makes the Right Point

Just to stay with the topic of vaccination for a moment longer--today a handful of possible presidential hopefuls made comments about where they stand on vaccination. Now, I guess my last post tells you where I stand. NJ Gov. Chris Christie expressed a need for "balance" regarding vaccination--which was elaborated as follows:

Christie, however, said, “There has to be a balance and it depends on what the vaccine is, what the disease type is, and all the rest.” He added, “Not every vaccine is created equal and not every disease type is as great a public health threat as others.”

Hm. I'll admit I don't get a flu shot, myself.  I have the social schedule of a shut-in and don't regularly deal face-to-face with the public. But even so, I'd definitely get one if I dealt with kids or the olds. Even if the flu shot isn't 100% effective--it would be worth it to reduce the likelihood that I'm going around infecting people who, unlike me, aren't strong as an ox and wouldn't shake the flu as easily. But I kind of think he isn't signifying about things like the yearly crapshoot that is the flu vaccine. I'm not sure what he's talking about. The MMR vaccine is the topic of the day, and it's very effective. But you know...the HPV vaccination was a little controversial, no?  (As in, yes, as in, why do people think they can be taken seriously if they just quote some anecdotal stuff from random acquaintances?)

KY Sen. Rand Paul also had some things to say about vaccinations, and the possible link to "profound mental disorders". That connection? Not at all proven. Correlation is not causation. Besides which, Rand Paul hangs with Alex Jones who thinks there is a weather machine. That's only a couple hops from worrying about the lizard-people who run the UN.

But Dr. Ben Carson, who, don't get me wrong, says a lot of things I don't agree with, makes the overall point of why vaccination is important:

“Although I strongly believe in individual rights and the rights of parents to raise their children as they see fit, I also recognize that public health and public safety are extremely important in our society,” Carson said in a statement to BuzzFeed News.

Carson said diseases of the past should not be allowed to return because of people avoiding vaccines on religious or philosophical grounds.

“Certain communicable diseases have been largely eradicated by immunization policies in this country and we should not allow those diseases to return by foregoing safe immunization programs, for philosophical, religious, or other reasons when we have the means to eradicate them,” Carson said in the statement.